IP Nightmares

While we accept the necessity of IP, everyone seems to have plenty of grips as well. What are your biggest complaints about IP developers or users?

When the notion of IP was first introduced there seemed to be more problems created by it than solved by it. Over time, many of those original issues have been resolved. Or have they? There are still some arguments we here all the time about IP quality, about how IP providers report their verification results, about how IP users make changes and still expect them to work… The list seems endless. Are we better off having the IP in the hands of the large EDA companies, or are they competing with their customers. What about the small IP houses. Will they still be around when the IP has problems? Is the code so obfuscated that it would take a genius to ever sort it out? Do you wish there were more standardization, perhaps less. What standards would you like to see?

While we accept the necessity of IP, everyone seems to have plenty of grips as well and I want to hear about yours.

The IP focus within the EDA Designline will be starting soon(May through July) and DAC will be right in the middle of it. I would like to hear from you about the biggest issues you have with IP suppliers, IP users, IP licensing, VIP. What are your biggest nightmares related to IP, your biggest complaints, issues or problems? Feel free to post them as comments to this blog, or email me so that they stay anonymous. I will then present those issues to a round table at DAC and post their responses in the EDA Designline for all to see. The round table participants will be selected based on the questions received, so if you know who you would like to be there to respond to your issues, then let me know. In can’t promise that, but I will make sure your issues are voiced and responded to.

So, don’t delay – let me know the questions you want to ask but would be afraid to in person. What would you like to see be different?

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I've been using some IP from Altera for a DDR2 SDRAM memory controller. I have not been able to get it to work after trying for more than a year and putting in a service request with them. My opinion on that IP and their support of it, to say the least, is that it absolutely stinks!!

Interesting, because the end-user modifications are inherent in the FOSS development model. In other words, it's a psychological expectation problem, not a technical problem---your company is caught between conflicting goals of flexibility and support.
It looks to me that you should get off the fence and decide which business model you're offering: proprietary black box IP provider, or a design services firm that works off a basic, essentially non-proprietary design baseline.

I personally work for an IP developer. One of the biggest problem we face is that our customers change the HDL developed by us on their own without consulting us. But they expect us to do the verification.This delays project delivery..

Same story with Freescale IMX53, the Open-GL graphic IP if from AMD together with the driver.
Without the driver source code it's impossible to switch to a new Linux kernel as nobody can recompile the graphic driver, even at Freescale ! Because of that we had to switch to another processor.

Raspberry Pi is a subsidized product from Broadcom. This is the only way to get this price. It is similar to the BeagleBone from TI. Therefore it is not an open system but a vendor eval board with a new marketing spin.

The biggest problem with IP is that use/knowledge doesn't follow the supplychain. Case in point is the Raspberry PI $35 computer designed for schoolkids to experiment on. There appear to be problems among the USB ports and the built-in USB Ethernet adapter. The problem appears to be in an embedded driver that was licensed to the processor vendor with the UPB/Ethernet IP. Engineers downstream (working for free) of the processor vendor can't reapair the code, because they can't be given access (violation of IP license??). The originator & the licensee can't upgrade without pricing the the processor out of its market.